Abstract
If there is one phrase that I most dread to hear, it’s ‘price check’. We all know this term by now; it is, in fact, definitive of the contemporary landscape of everyday shopping. We all know the routine as well. As the sound of this phrase floats in the supermarket air, having been spluttered into a public address system by some frazzled kid at the check-out, everyone in the queue slumps on one leg and breathes in frustration at the fact that we are going to have to wait. Meanwhile, the cost of the offending article is ever so slowly ascertained. This is not what computerised scanning was meant to be all about. Bar codes are supposed to put a bar on delay. But, of course, they don’t; they bolster an efficiency of stock control with no promise of quick service. And in a world of fast consumption, a delay of any such kind becomes more and more intolerable. If it’s not there in the shop or online; if it’s not quickly purchasable or deliverable; it’s not worth having. If the systems and technologies of consumption fail — and the queue moves too slowly — it’s an excuse for consumer outrage.
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Humphery, K. (2013). The Time of Consumption. In: Osbaldiston, N. (eds) Culture of the Slow. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319449_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319449_2
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